Josh and the Magic Vial (20 page)

“Can't it wait till morning, Jenkins?” the editor grumped. “It's past midnight, and I've got to be up at five.”

“Well, that's the funny thing. This Puddifant says he might not be able to pass on the information after tonight.”

“He's having you on!” Rawling griped. “It's a prank.”

“No, Alfred, he's not. I believe the man is ill.”

“Damn it, this had better be good!” the exasperated editor growled. “If it's one of your friends playing a joke, I'll run
you
through the press Jenkins. That'll be the news. I'll be round in half-an-hour to pick you up.”

True to his word, Rawling arrived by cab in precisely half an hour, and together the two men made the trip to Puddifant's block of flats, not far from Vauxhall Road. The night was bitter cold, and they stamped their feet and rubbed their hands, waiting on the landing for Puddifant to open his door. “Knock again,” Rawling snapped.

Sam banged hard. Again, they listened, the reporter's stomach in a knot. Rawling was chuffing like a steam engine warming up for some serious pulling. Annoying Alfred Rawling was not a good way to brighten your career prospects, and Sam had a sinking feeling that his future had already dimmed in the editor's eyes. He was about to thump at the door once more, when a thin voice issuing from inside the flat stayed his hand.

“Come in,” it gasped.

“It's Sam Jenkins, sir, with Alfred Rawling, Editor of the Herald,” Sam called down the gloomy corridor. They groped along the hallway toward a faint incandescence that spilled out of a room at the far end — the sitting room it turned out. There, they found Puddifant huddled under a pile of blankets in an overstuffed armchair. He shivered violently, his teeth chattering.

“Good God man!” Rawling cried, advancing quickly and feeling the detective's forehead. “You're burning up. We need to get you to a hospital immediately.”

“Too late,” Puddifant croaked. “Do not call for help until our business is concluded.”

“You're on the brink of death, man. Story be damned.”

“Lives depend on this!” Puddifant growled, summoning all his strength, then coughing with the effort. “Nothing you can do will save me. But if you listen to what I have to say, and report it, you may save others. I am convinced many others shall die unless you hear me out.”

“I can't be party to this!”

“Alfred,” Sam intervened. “Hear him out. What difference will a couple of minutes make? Especially if lives weigh in the balance.”

“Listen,” Puddifant urged. “For the moment I am of sound mind. The information I am about to convey can all be verified through the leads I will provide. Once you have heard my story, you will want to verify everything, I'm sure. It's a strange tale, gentlemen, hard to believe, even coming from the lips of a sane man. By tomorrow I'm certain to be delirious and my story will be worthless.”

Rawling stared at Puddifant, then at his reporter. “Bah!” he spat. “I don't like this one bit. Not one bit. But go ahead.”

As Puddifant prepared to speak, Rawling paced nervously.

“First, a warning gentlemen,” the inspector began.

“A warning?”

“Yes,” Puddifant insisted. “You must understand that Sam here will be risking the same fate I am suffering if he agrees to research and write this story. The man who poisoned me . . . ”

“Poisoned?” Jenkins cried.

“Yes, I have been poisoned. And the man who did it will go to any lengths to prevent this information getting out. He's a cold-blooded killer. For your own safety you must do your utmost to get this story into print quickly, by tomorrow if you can.”

“Tomorrow!” Rawling exploded.

“Second,” Puddifant ignored the editor's objection, “you must put Sam under protection. Do not let him out of your sight for an instant.”

Again Rawling hesitated.

“Alfred.” Sam put in. “From what I've heard so far, my guess is every soul in London will be clamouring for a copy of the Herald once we get this story — whatever it is — into print. Isn't that our job? To bring people the news?”

Rawling gave in. “All right,” he sighed. “But remember Jenkins, both our careers can be ruined by a single story. That's all it takes.”

“Or made by one,” Sam Jenkins reminded his editor.

“You understand the risks, then?” Puddifant asked.

The two men nodded.

“Good. Then sit down and start taking notes Mr. Jenkins. I have a lot to tell and I'm not sure how much time I have left to tell it. I want to start with a child named Charlie Underwood. A fine young man, who died just over a week ago in the Great Ormond Street Hospital . . .

As Puddifant reeled off names, addresses, and phone numbers, Sam Jenkins scribbled page after page in his notebook. He learned about Charlie and the other victims; about Enver and Elvira Skogs; the East London Coven and its influential members; Vortigen and the cult of Syde. Through the long interview he heard over and over again the name Sirus Blackstone, owner of Blackstone's Magic and Occult Emporium in Wellclose Square. “Be wary of him,” Puddifant warned. “He is extremely dangerous. Under no circumstances should you approach him alone, for you would be putting yourself in grave danger if you did.”

Exhausted, Puddifant sagged into his chair. “I have finished, gentlemen,” he said at last. “It is time for you to leave.”

“But what about getting you some medical attention, Puddifant,” Rawling objected.

“Ah yes.” Puddifant agreed. “I should greatly appreciate it if you would call for an ambulance.”

Chief Inspector Wexly paced nervously. If Puddifant survived, which seemed doubtful, he would certainly face a disciplinary hearing. As an officer of the law, Robert Wexly could in no way condone what his subordinate had done — it was almost criminal in the Chief Inspector's eyes to go to the press with details of an investigation. To do so without authorization
was
criminal! Yet he had never been prouder of a fellow officer.

All that would have to be sorted out if Puddifant lived. If! Chief Wexly was not a religious man, nevertheless he prayed. This case defied his policeman's logic “Black magic, or poison, take your pick,” he muttered. Either scenario seemed absurd.

“Can you forgive me, sir?” Puddifant croaked.

“Forgive you? Why, if it were up to me, I'd give you a medal as big as a cartwheel! There's nothing to forgive.”

Puddifant chuckled. “But it won't be up to you Chief, will it?”

“No, Puddifant. It won't.”

“As long as you understand I did not betray you, I think everything will be all right with me.”

“Then rest easy, man,” Chief Wexly counselled, patting Puddifant's hand. “I know what you are trying to do Inspector, and I also know you wouldn't hesitate an instant if you thought any action of yours might save a life. Career be damned, I understand completely what you are about my good man, and there have been times when
I
could have done with some of your courage.”

Puddifant, who had been watching the Chief's every move, suddenly gripped Wexly's hand and held tight like a man clinging to a branch. “Not yet!” he shouted, in a direction somewhere beyond his companion. “Get away, carrion bird!”

“Horace?”

“Can't you see them?” Puddifant cried.

The Chief Inspector shook his head. “See who?”

“Vortigen's crew. Can't you see them?”

“No Horace, I cannot. They aren't real, man. You mustn't give in to them. Hold fast to what is real and you will stand a better chance . . . ” Robert Wexly let his thoughts trail off into silence.

“A better chance of surviving?” Puddifant concluded the sentence for him.

“Of recovering quickly,” the Chief corrected.

Puddifant rasped out a feeble laugh. “Remember the boy, Underwood?”

“Yes,” Wexly sighed. “Of course.”

“Before he died, I offered the same advice, Chief. I could not see the horror; I thought it was all a lurid dream. But it wasn't.” Puddifant shuddered, suddenly cringing.

“Horace!” ChiefWexly pleaded.

“Vortigen exists. He's coming. Now. And he won't leave until he's got what he's come for, he and his minions.”

“They're not real,” Wexly growled. “Drive them off, Horace. Cling to the truth.”

“I was a fool, Chief— a fool who could not see through his own logic. The truth defies logic Chief. It mocks our pathetic reasoning . . . The boy needed a seer, not a policeman; a mystic, not a doctor. My God! How miserably we failed that youth.”

“Puddifant!” the Chief cried. “You did everything you could for that boy. You have risked your career, your very life, for him. No one can fault you on that count, and you
will
get a commendation, damn it.”

“He comes!” Puddifant whispered.

“What are you talking about?”

“Vortigen. He's at the window. Do you see him?”

“No,” Wexly answered. “I don't.”

The Chief lunged across the room. “Be gone!” he bellowed.

“Get away from here, you glorified bat. Get Away!”

Then something quite remarkable happened, something that would collapse the very logic of Robert Wexly's world like tent poles in a hurricane, and transform him into a man who would ever afterward be considered “strange” by friends and colleagues. In that instant the Chief did see shadows moving — dimly at first — as disturbances in the patterns of light. He would later talk about a “profound alteration in the energy of nature,” a phrase no one would understand. At the time, they were simply mirages becoming real.

“Wha . . . ?” he gasped, confounded.

The more he looked at these disturbances, the more palpable they became, until he had to accept them as somehow real. A vicious spiral of terror and rage took hold of him. A huge spirit hovered inside the window having passed through the glass is if it were air. This was Vortigen! The birdman! It was a creature huge not so much in physical stature as in the energy of its presence.

“Monstrous!” is how ChiefWexly would describe it.

The creature, this thing, glared imperiously around the room, seeing everything and seeing through every thing. A swarm of lesser beings mobbed Puddifant's bed. They tugged at the blankets, his gown, his hair; they perched on the iron rails, and hung from the light fixtures.

“My God!” Wexly cried out.

Then, in utter horror he watched as a light was drawn out of Puddifant. He could only think of it as “light,” but the word was wholly inadequate. The substance expanded, filling the room with an insufferable brilliance. It pulsed on the air, a glorious infusion of spirit.

Then Vortigen yelled a word, which Robert Wexly could not understand, but which he knew to be both sacred and evil. The texture of the light changed, in the same way that a shoal of silver fish might dim if it suddenly changes direction. The radiance turned in on itself, shrinking, compressing, imploding until it had been concentrated into a pinpoint that darted about the room like a firefly. This Vortigen snatched in his bare hand.

“No!” Wexly screamed. “Let him go you bastard!”

But in less than an instant Vortigen and his crew vanished.

A doctor and nurse burst into the room, alarmed by Wexly's shouts. They bent over the patient, working feverishly to revive him. But in the end, they had to admit defeat. Inspector Horace Puddifant was dead. Vortigen had struck again.

35

N
othing!

Blackstone had expected some kind of interference from the police, but so far there had been no sudden banging on his door, no demands that he open up, no handing him a warrant. “Fools!” he gloated. “The law really
is
an ass.”

He held up the Spirit Bottle in which Inspector Horace Puddifant was now imprisoned. “Well, my friend, I've got you now,” Blackstone said. “And I don't see your chums coming round to do anything about it. They've abandoned you, eh? Betrayed you. Oh well, you shall be my companion from here on in, and I can assure you, I shall never abandon you Horace. No, you shall be with me for a very long time, I think.”

The bottle glowed a fierce red.

“It's no good getting angry!” Blackstone taunted. “That will only prolong your punishment — and I should think forever would be quite long enough!” He laughed, pocketing the Spirit Bottle. Even if the police searched his person and found the vial, they would not know what it was. So, Blackstone kept it with him. The pleasure was well worth the risk, he reasoned. All in all, it had been a very successful week, and he wanted to savour it to the full.

Puddifant imprisoned, Skogs dead — the whole business tidied up, and no one the wiser . . . “Speaking of Wizer,” Blackstone mused, “I shall have to attend to the professor sometime soon. He has caused me quite enough trouble.

Another Spirit Bottle would make a set, a nicely balanced notion, I think.” The idea of casting the Spell of Imprisonment a second time gave Blackstone something to look forward to.

“Patience,” he cautioned. “All in good time.” Blackstone went over all he had accomplished and reminded himself how important impeccable timing had been to his success. Patience and persistence had led him to Calcutta, where
The Book of
Syde
had been discovered; patience — and unmitigated evil — had brought him his parents' fortune so he could acquire the sacred text; patience had allowed him to endure the hours of study and instruction needed to learn the obscure Sydean script and extract its mystic power; patience had helped him build the East London Coven and extend its influence.

To think an insignificant bug like Horace Puddifant had come so close to ruining everything. Blackstone scowled. The danger was over, but he had to learn from the experience. From then on, Blackstone would be more vigilant. That the danger had passed, he was certain. Even if the police did raid his shop, there would be nothing for them to find. He'd made sure of that. Besides, if they were going to search, they would have done it sooner. Why give him time to prepare? They would have swooped down during the night, or in the early hours of the morning. Either Puddifant had not had time to submit a report or, having received a report, his superiors thought the man mad.